by Unknown
Yeah, no. Wrong. They were as real as she was. It hadn’t taken her long to accept it as fact because, as a scientist and a doctor, when one was faced with an inconvertible truth, one adapted. It was the only logical answer.
She’d seen vampires, met them. Elizabeth was sure the doctor she worked with now was one. She’d recognized his name. Elizabeth hadn’t called him on it, because he hadn’t said anything about her name. So, why bring it up? His dead or undead status didn’t make him any less of a man of science.
The comm link buzzed and Elizabeth and Polidori exchanged a nervous glance.
“Seems they do keep up on things here.” His hand hovered over the button. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
Executive Director of Science and Tech, Mae Lin’s face loomed on the gigantic screen in front of them. “On behalf of Director Roanridge, we send our congratulations. This was the breakthrough we’ve been looking for. We’ll be moving to human and inhuman trials immediately.”
This was unheard of. It was unethical. They needed to reproduce these results again and again, they needed years of data before moving to human trials. But this was Bureau 7, and they operated outside the laws of men or gods. She knew this was wrong. She wanted to say so, but found she couldn’t move her mouth with the cold, sharp eyes of the Executive Assistant Director boring through her.
“Is that a problem, Dr. Wollstonecraft?”
She debated how best to answer. “Protocol—”
“We don’t have time for protocol. The cells you’re working with right now are from Isla Roanridge.”
The Director’s wife.
“Your volunteers will be arriving within the hour.” EAD Lin smiled at her. “We’ve been waiting for this. I trust you won’t disappoint us?”
EAD Lin didn’t really want an answer. If she had, she’d have stayed on the comm and waited for one.
Elizabeth scrubbed a hand over her face. “This doesn’t feel right.”
“What did you think you’d signed up for when you took this job?” John asked her. “Just look at it like this. Usually, you present your results to a board. You apply for funds, for grants. You have the money. The board said yes.”
“We don’t have enough information to move to human trials. We both know what these neurodegenerative diseases can do. If we infect people with this, and what happened just now was a fluke, we’ve murdered them.”
John took her hand gently, as if she were a child asking about the monsters in the dark. “It’s a better fate than whatever else Bureau 7 has in store for them. Or the ugly death waiting for them with these other illnesses. I guarantee that half of these people don’t know their own name, let alone where they are or what’s happened to them. You’ll be the cure for their pain one way or another, Dr. Wollstonecraft.”
This wasn’t what she wanted. “How are our supplies?”
“You mean do we have enough pentobarbital to put them down if it fails? We do.” Polidori began gathering files. “You should know, the other half of our experiment group? The ones who do know what’s going on? They’re all dead men walking.”
“What do you mean?”
“Death penalty cases slated for execution. Don’t get too soft in your feels over them. They’ve done terrible things.” John smiled. “Terrible, terrible things.”
That didn’t mean they deserved this, but Elizabeth didn’t speak. Instead, she peered back down through the electron microscope and saw that the glioblastoma had been obliterated. All that was left was healthy, functioning, living cells.
Cells that should’ve been long dead.
Elizabeth wasn’t sure anyone was ready for the effect this would have on a human being. He gut knotted with fear, but coiled around that fear was something she was ashamed of.
Excitement.
The curiosity that had pushed her toward this field and the drive to succeed that made her accept this job also had a dark side. The end should not justify the means, but sometimes, it did. She didn’t like to stop and examine that in herself, but she had to.
If this went sideways, she couldn’t claim ignorance. She’d have to own her part. It was her hands administering the drug. No one could force her to do it. There was always a choice.
Elizabeth would like to say that it was a hard choice, that she was going to wrestle with it and ultimately decide that her ethics were more important, but they weren’t. She knew the Director’s pain. Her own mother had died of a brain tumor.
“Having a bit of a crisis, are you, Elizabeth?” Polidori fixed his predator’s eyes on her and, for the first time, she felt like prey.
“Maybe I am.”
“Did you think we were the only team working on this project?” His tone was gentle—too gentle. Almost as if he pitied her and she was a child wandering in the dark.
Maybe he was right, because she had thought this was her project. “Of course I did. I’m the one who pitched it to EAD Lin.”
“Who knows how many little research facilities like this Bureau 7 has? How many minds they have working on the same problem? You may have pitched this version of the idea, but they’ve been working with prions for years. Since the 60’s and Gajdusek. You’re the one who managed to reprogram them, though.”
A cold sense of betrayal washed over her, but she stuffed it down. It wasn’t on Bureau 7 to give her the rundown of every project they had in development, even though it felt like Polidori had been laughing at her. This wasn’t about her. It had to be about the science.
His regard didn’t seem so remote or condescending anymore. He was just John again. “Hey, chin up. You’ve made strides where no one else has. You’re still the one who gets to move forward with the research. Don’t let something as silly as human morality keep you from accomplishing something great.”
She pressed her lips together. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Elizabeth saw something in his face and spoke again. “If you tell me it’s a need to know basis and I didn’t need to know, I’m going to kick you.”
John laughed. “It’s like many things between us, I thought it was understood. You’re a brilliant woman, Elizabeth.” He left the rest unspoken, just like the knowledge that passed between them.
Warmth suffused her at his praise. In his position, she wondered if she’d still be able to see the world as he did. As something to explore and discover. Part of what made her job hard was lack of time. There was never enough time to do everything that needed to be done, or everything she wanted to do. The hands on the clock always seemed to be spinning. But what if they weren’t? If she had nothing but time, what would she do with it?
“Did I render you speechless, dear Elizabeth, with my compliment?” His smile was warm and genuine, no trace of the predator, only John.
“I was thinking of other things unspoken. Those that I know to be true.” She referred to the fact he was a vampire.
“Shall we speak of them now, in this moment before the fall?”
She knew exactly what fall he spoke of. This moment, it was brand new. It was a beginning. It was infancy. It was innocence. What came next was… something else. Something that would make this time inaccessible, even in memory because it would change them irrefutably. “No, I don’t suppose they matter anymore now than they did then.”
“I must. Just this one thing. You remind me of her.” His regard was keen, as if even know, he was stacking and weighing her merit.
“Of Mary?” Something in her rebelled. She was so tired of being compared to her by people who didn’t actually know either of them, but this creature who did? A million times worse. She wasn’t a silly little girl running off to marry a tragic, aged poet twice her age. She was a doctor, a scientist.
“I know that’s not what you want to hear, but yes. She had an insatiable curiosity. A certain fire. Once she set her sights on something she wanted, there was nothing that could stand in her way.”
“But all she wanted was a man. I’ve got bigger plans.”
“Are you sure about that?” Polidori eyed her. “Maybe she’d be just as disappointed with her legacy as you are.”
“Really?”
“She wanted to be a doctor for the same reasons you did. Her mother died of a brain tumor. Seems the Wollstonecraft line is rotten with them.”
He was a master manipulator. She knew his words had been designed to push her forward, to jump into this aberration with both feet. Elizabeth had made her choice, but not because Polidori told her to. Or implied that if she didn’t, she’d be the one with the brain tumor.
“Then why wasn’t she? Why she did she spent her holidays at debauched house parties and chasing after a married man?”
“I’m surprised at the moral judgement in your tone.”
“She was a child. A silly child that wrote a silly book.”
Polidori seemed all predator again. “There are things you don’t know about that night. Things no one knows. Mary trained as a doctor in secret. That’s why we were all together that night.”
“And the orgy, don’t forget that part.” Elizabeth rolled her eyes.
“So we engaged in a bit of fun, the four of us. What does that matter?” Polidori smiled, his teeth too white, too perfect. “I wanted to change them, you know. Bring them with me on the rest of this journey, but George wouldn’t hear of it and Percy was taken from us much too soon.” Polidori was silent for a long moment before casting a sly glance in her direction. “And Adam. He wouldn’t allow me near Mary with those thoughts in my head.”
Who was Adam? But she didn’t ask, because she could see how badly he wanted her to. He was so eager to share this information with her, to make her dig it out of him. She refused to indulge him.
She began gathering her papers. The subjects from the mainland would be there any moment.
“Don’t act as if I haven’t caught your interest. Come now, Elizabeth. Ask me. You’ve seen the scars on my biceps. You know you’re curious.”
“Of course I am, but you’ll tell me in your own time. Or you won’t. I’m not going to dance for you.”
“But you do it so prettily.”
“How does anyone not know you’re a vampire? You’re textbook.” She shook her head.
He laughed. “My apologies, my dear. It seems I can’t help myself from taking advantage of your good nature. You must forgive me.”
Elizabeth rather liked his old world manners, even if he could be a bit of a shit. “I guess. Tell me.” She sighed.
“Hmm.” He inspected her again. “Now that I revisit the subject, I don’t know that you’ll believe me.”
She narrowed her eyes, and he laughed again. “You’re too much fun.” He removed his lab coat and began unbuttoning his shirt.
She’d seen his scars, yes. Never up close, only in passing. She’d been curious as to what could’ve possibly made them, because it was obvious they’d been inflicted post transformation. All of their human ills were obliterated when they were turned. Their skin was like an infant’s, perfect. Unmarred.
As he revealed his flesh to her, she was able to see the scars under the harsh fluorescent lights of the lab. Twin marks showed on each side. It looked for all the world as if the giant hands of God had gripped him there, and it had been seared into his flesh for all eternity.
Burned and bruised, purple and raging. If he were human, she’d have guessed whatever happened to him had only occurred last night. They weren’t scars in the traditional sense.
“Do they pain you?” She reached out a hesitant hand to touch them, but dropped it to her side.
“Only if I think about things I shouldn’t,” he said cryptically.
“Like what kinds of things you shouldn’t?” She wondered just what exactly would register on John Polidori’s list of restricted things. It didn’t seem like he denied himself much.
“Things like you. What your blood would taste like.”
Before her eyes, the marks on his arms began to glow as if they were lit from a fire that burned beneath the skin.
“Why are you thinking about my blood, Dr. Polidori?” Had she mistakenly assumed she was safe with him?
“Just to prove a point.” The flares died down.
Her brain suddenly made the connection. Adam wouldn’t let me… things I shouldn’t… The only thing she had in common with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was a name and a bloodline.
The pathway that lit inside her head was impossible, yet it seemed to be the only logical answer.
The silly little book was more than a book. The Modern Prometheus was real and tied to her through blood. It would explain why Bureau 7 had been so keen to get her. She was good at what she did, but there were those who were better. She wasn’t well-known, or a sought after name.
She couldn’t figure out exactly what she brought to the table that had caused them to agree to her salary requirements when they could’ve had someone just as good for less money. Someone with even looser ethics than her own.
That was what made it real, simple fiscal logic.
It was something she’d suspected when they first came knocking—that their recruitment fervor had something to do with Mary and the monster.
Only, right now, looking at Polidori, she wondered who the real monster was.
“Figured it out, have you?”
“Maybe.”
“They want him, you know. Bureau 7. You’ve always been bait. Beautiful and brilliant, but bait.” Polidori slid into his shirt and buttoned it.
“What’s your role to play, Doctor?”
“Only what I’ve been doing. To work with you on this project. To lure Adam. I told them they should simply tell you. That if they gave you project head, you’d get him here of your own volition.”
Elizabeth didn’t know how she felt about that and wasn’t sure she wanted to examine it. “What do you get out of it?”
“George, of course. Your work with Adam coupled with this project? Reanimation and immortality, my dear.” He advanced on her, but his touch was gentle when he squeezed her arm. “You’re going to give me back the love of my life. With these prions, you’ve unlocked something that’s defeated me for hundreds of years. I’m not sure if I’m jealous or in awe. Perhaps a bit of both.”
The comm buzzed. “Subjects inbound. Code Blue, Dock Five.”
Shit. “Link us to onboard medical.”
Static buzzed over the comm, and the raging sound of the helicopter. “Middle-aged white male, unknown cardiac event. Unable to resuscitate.”
Elizabeth didn’t know what to do with him. They weren’t prepared for this. “Put him in Lab 2.”
“You’ll want him in a containment unit,” the voice over the comm said. “He’s already been dosed with PrPM3.”
PrPM was her synthesized refolded prion.
Just what the fuck was PrPM3?
Nothing good.
She looked at Polidori who shrugged. “Bring him to main lab.”
“ETA in five.”
2
T rieste, Italy Miramare Castle
HE’D SPENT his days in the bowels of the castle, in secret passages that time, architectural plans, and modern man had forgotten.
But it wasn’t like it used to be. He wasn’t hiding, not really.
He hadn’t been chased into the pit of hell by an angry mob of villagers carrying pitchforks. No, he had a job looking after the castle, making repairs, and keeping everything in working order for the tourists that wandered the halls.
Adam enjoyed his work. It was simple, but fulfilling. These days, if someone caught sight of him, they didn’t scream or run. People smiled at him and told him he’d done a good job. If they saw the scars on his wrists or around his neck, or any of the other things that made people fear him in the past, they said nothing.
What Adam especially enjoyed about Miramare was the long evenings on his boat. Fishing for his dinner, preparing it. Eating it while the gentle waves rocked the boat and drinking one of the many bottles of wine people had given him in exc
hange for his masonry or other skills.
He didn’t have much use for money. Even this boat, he’d taken it in trade. He wasn’t a man, not anymore, and therefore had no use for most things in the world of man.
This new age made him wonder if perhaps he’d been mistaken. Until hunters for various groups found him, wanted to study him. If only they’d ask, and not try to take his freedom, he’d share the knowledge of his flesh.
Only they didn’t ask. They wanted to take. Just like his maker.
No, he’d stay in the dark until the world forgot about him again.
He both feared and yearned for the day the bloodline was extinct.
Adam knew they were the reason for his existence. Perhaps when they expired, so would he, but he didn’t fear death. He feared slavery, imprisonment. The theft of his free will.
He’d done horrible things in service to the Wollstonecraft bloodline, murder perhaps not even being the worst.
For the last month, the tingling at the back of his neck that always precipitated the loss of his freedom, the call to arms to defend, protect, and serve the Wollstonecrafts had become an ever more intensifying itch.
Adam hadn’t thought little Elizabeth would be a problem.
He’d been there the day her mother died. He’d sensed her distress, her need of him. He’d gone, only to find the small girl child sitting alone in the hospital waiting room, sobbing into her doll’s hair.
She’d been so small then, her blue eyes large and luminous. Corn silk hair in two ponytails. She could’ve been a doll herself. “My mama is gone,” she’d said.
He’d sat down beside her, unsure of what to say. For someone such as he, immortal, the ages passed. People changed. People died. He stayed the same.
She didn’t need him to speak. She’d clambered up his massive lap, and planted herself there, tugging on his arm—wanting him to embrace her. So he had. It was what she needed and what he was bound to provide.
He kept thinking someone was going to see him with this child and think all the wrong things. Someone was going to come and rip her away from him, but they didn’t. No one came.
Little Elizabeth Wollstonecraft was all alone in the world. The last of her line. He’d known a kind of relief then. He’d been heartsore for her, the little lost girl, but a kind of peace inside of himself that this was almost over.